Expo client is not installing on Simulator

Question

I have been using this setup for almost half a year now and I upgraded the Expo SDK to 44 (erased all content and settings on the simulator). Ever since, the expo client won't install on the simulator.

Things I have tried:

• run expo client:install:ios
• uninstall and reinstall expo
• uninstall and reinstall watchman
• tried different simulators (15.0 that I used so far)
• creating a new blank expo project
• open the simulator first and then npm start
• I even did a complete MacBook reset (factory, needed to wipe anyway) and reinstalled following the expo documentation.

I read something about installing expo without sudo, but then it will throw errors and will simply not install.

New blank expo project infos:

Expo : 44.0.0 expo-cli: 5.0.3 react-native: 0.64.3

Hope someone knows the solution to this, I really want to get back programming.

Answer 1

I had the same problem. Turns out using sudo when installing expo-cli is the issue. Run the following commands to resolve it.

npm uninstall -g expo-cli
npm install -g expo-cli

Then from your Mac's user's directory in a new terminal, run the following:

mkdir apps
cd apps
expo init app-name

Once this finishes, it should work just fine after running npm start.

Answer 2

As @Mercify said, sudo was indeed the problem.

For future reference: if installing expo without sudo throws an error, it is nessecary to change "the owner" of the folder "/usr/.../node_modules" to your user. This post helps changing the owner.

Error: EACCES: permission denied, access '/usr/local/lib/node_modules'

Expo is now installing on the Simulator. Thanks to @Mercify.